The Graces (19 page)

It wasn’t.

I could not watch someone else die in front of me, and yet I just stood there, frozen. I heard Mum turn the tap on, splashing and sploshing frantically, but
the sound seemed to come from very far away, like a television in another room. I watched Gwydion pull his wife to him and bring his fist down on her back. She was making the tiniest flat sound of no air going in. He took hold of her from behind the chair and pulled his clasped fists back into her stomach. I watched, mesmerised at the violence of it.

Esther was hacking, dragging air in as mashed biscuit leaked out of her mouth.

‘Can we have a tissue please,’ said Gwydion, calm as anything.

Mum brought a box over, her hands shaking. Esther pushed a big handful of tissue to her mouth, cleaning up. Her head hung down as if she were ashamed.

We sat in silence.

‘Those bloody biscuits, they’re so dry,’ Mum ventured, in her most tentative voice. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope you’re feeling better, Mrs Grace.’

Esther was staring at her mug. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you,’ she replied, eventually. I half expected her voice to come out all squashed, but she sounded the same as before.

‘I think we should be going,’ Gwydion said. He had one arm still protectively round Esther’s back.

‘Of course. I think we can all agree that it’s best if everybody just keeps to themselves for a while. Let
people come to terms with things.’ Mum shot me a look. She had her bright, blank face on. ‘Thanks for coming to have a chat. I think we’ve got it all quite clear.’

She pulled on my arm, moving me out of the kitchen doorway.

I didn’t protest.

I didn’t even know what to do now.

Esther and Gwydion stood, manoeuvring carefully around the table. He hugged her close and wouldn’t let her go. I found myself wondering why he loved her, and how they’d met, and what they had been like when they were my age. Had time hardened her into this frightened, controlling thing, or had she been fixed from early on? What did she believe in? What made her happy?

We watched them go from the front doorstep, and with them I felt the last of me drain away, my light, my life. My coal-black and coal-bright voice was silent. Maybe I’d never hear it again.

‘Well,’ said my mother. ‘She was a bit snobby, wasn’t she?’ She put her arm tentatively round my shoulders.

I burst into great, shuddering tears.

Away walked the last chance of fixing me.

Away walked the last chance of ever getting my father back.

He was gone. That was it.

‘It’s for the best,’ came my mother’s voice above my head, soft and final, as she hugged me to her. ‘I know you want to believe that everyone can get along, and we’re all the same, but people like them stay in their corners, and we stay in ours, and that’s how the world works. It’s for the best,’ she repeated.

I wondered, at last, if she was right.

I was locking up the café when I first felt it.

It was Friday night. Only a couple of weeks to Christmas, and two months since Esther and Gwydion’s visit.

Things were different now.

I preferred to work these days. I’d been spending all my time alone again, so it made sense to put those hours of nothing outside of school to good use and get some more money coming in. I’d been lucky enough to stop off at this place just as they’d put up a handwritten sign recruiting for a new waitress. It was better to be busy because busy kept me from thinking. Busy helped me ignore the reaching, yearning feeling in my guts.

I’d given away my witchcraft books to a charity shop. The lady running the place had shot me the filthiest look when she realised what they were – maybe she burned them instead of selling them. I found I didn’t really care,
one way or the other. That part of my life was over.

It had been a long shift. There was a family who wouldn’t leave, with one of those beautiful golden-haired kids who alternately screamed the house down and charmed the pants off you. They came in regularly, so they must have lived around there. They liked the café because, as the mother told me once, ‘It’s artisanal.’ I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded.

It was a nice place, anyway. Kind of dingy, but Delia, the manager, had done pretty well with the furnishings. She called the style natural vintage, but all I could think of was that sometimes, when I let it, it reminded me of the Grace house, and my heart tipped over.

They did great cakes at the café. People raved about them. There was some small magic in food, I was learning. I wondered sometimes if the baker who made them might be an earth witch – her cupcakes looked and tasted like feelings. Maybe I wished I could be her. I wondered if she was happy. I wondered if she spent all day in chunky earth-coloured knits and heavy jewellery, whirling around a warm-tiled kitchen with her fingers covered in flour.

Delia had only just started trusting me to lock up the place by myself on the evening shift. It was a stupid thing to feel pleased about, but there was something so quietly enormous about another human
being placing so much trust in you with their things. I didn’t want to screw this up. I wanted to be River 2.0, the one everybody liked. Kind of quiet, okay, but reliable and worth having around. This was my second transformation, and I liked this one best so far. This one made me feel capable, and normal, and in control.

I worked as many weeknights as I could get, and weekends too. Mum liked that I had a job and my own income again. She said I could be independent. That it would keep me out of trouble.

But as soon as the key turned and the door gave that sliding click, I felt it on my neck, like someone was watching me. When I turned, I was alone on the street.

I had the house to myself that night, at least – Mum was on a night-shift rotation, and I wouldn’t see her until late afternoon tomorrow, when she got out of bed. Delia slipped me leftover cake occasionally, as a bonus tip. I was grateful – it made life just a tiny bit more bearable. I had a tub of her homemade peanut butter ice cream in the freezer and a favourite book on standby – my preferred method of temporary forgetting.

Which was smashed to pieces when I got home because Summer was sitting on my doorstep, hunched against the cold.

She was huddled there like a lost puppy, and it was a lie, a big fat lie, because she was no puppy
and she had never been lost. She’d cut her hair since disappearing off to boarding school. It was still dyed liquorice black, but now it followed the angles of her head, cropped to her skull at the back, flopping forward at the front. She looked like a supermodel.

She broke the bubble first.

‘River,’ she said.

Just her voice, saying my name, was enough to make my insides flare.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said, astonished. ‘You can’t be here. We don’t do this any more.’

We didn’t talk. We didn’t call. We didn’t do anything. I hadn’t even seen them around town – Esther had been true to her word. Two months ago they had vanished, and I’d learned to live with the hole they’d left behind.

Summer sniffed, annoyed. ‘Stop looking at me like I’m breaking the law or something. I just wanted to see you. It’s been so long. I just …’

She tailed off and hugged her arms close to herself. It was really cold. I had no idea how long she’d been sitting there.

‘I just wanted to know how you are,’ she finished.

‘Does anyone else know you’re here?’

She hesitated. ‘No. I’m supposed to be staying at school this weekend, like a good little girl.’ The dry way she said that last melted me a little. Just a little.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s just better if we stay away from each other. If we stay away, like we’ve been doing, no one else is going to get hurt, okay?’

‘I never agreed to that.’

I stared at her. ‘Are you kidding me? You ignored the hell out of me for weeks, and then you all left! You just left me behind!’

‘You lied about Wolf. I didn’t take it well, okay? I hate it when people lie to me! It makes me so f—’ She stopped. Dragged in a deep breath. ‘I was angry with you. I couldn’t believe you didn’t trust me enough with the truth.’

I snorted, and she rolled her eyes. ‘Look, I get why
now
,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve had time to think about it. I guess we’re all really good at keeping secrets. And look where that got us.’

She shivered. ‘Please, can we just talk? Preferably inside where my balls aren’t going to freeze up and drop off?’

‘You don’t have any balls.’

‘Ouch. Well, maybe I’ve grown a pair since I’ve been away.’

I hesitated.

But it was too late. The moment I’d seen her it was all too late. I was buzzing again, like I’d spent the last two months without power and she was my own
personal battery.

It was just a conversation.

I hunted in the cupboards for hot chocolate while Summer perched at the kitchen table.

‘Esther let you come round, then,’ I goaded as I switched on the kettle.

‘She has no idea I’m here. This is the first time since we left that she’s not at the house. She and Gwydion are out of the country, frolicking somewhere warm for the weekend, so I took the chance to pay the old hometown a little visit.’

I sat down and pushed a mug of hot chocolate towards her, warming my hands on my own. I took a sip to give myself something to do. It was still hot and burned my tongue.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said suddenly.

I waited, wary.

‘Do you believe in the curse?’

She gazed at me intently. I opened my mouth and then shut it, caught by surprise.

River 2.0 did not. River 2.0 was normal, and sensible, and recognised that those kinds of things were beguiling but childish fantasy. It was easy to let yourself get all hysterical, to get swept up in the drama of it – but in the end it caused only trouble and hurt.

‘I’ve been thinking a lot about coincidence recently,’ I said at last. ‘I mean. Marcus, he’s unstable. Maybe he just couldn’t handle being shut out.’

Summer tilted her head. ‘The spells we did,’ she said. ‘The things that happened. You think it was all just coincidence?’

‘Well, none of it worked, did it? I mean, we never saw any real evidence of it.’

‘Wolf,’ she said quietly. ‘He drowned?’

‘Of course he drowned,’ I said irritably. ‘I was there. He was drunk and he was standing too close to the water and he drowned.’ Was she here to pick a fight with me about that again? I’d managed to not think about Wolf for a while now, and I couldn’t bear reopening that wound.

For the longest time, she said nothing.

‘Are you telling me now that you don’t believe?’ I prodded. ‘Because you certainly always acted like you did.’

She was staring into her mug.

‘I don’t know. I don’t have any answers,’ she said. ‘I never have. It depends who you ask. Ask Fen … you know what he’d say.’ Her mouth pulled into a wry twist. ‘Ask Thalia … you know
she
believes. It’s part of why she’s so bloody tragic about everything.’

‘And you’re, what? Piggy in the middle?’

‘Haven’t really made up my mind about it all,’ she said, leaning back, her gaze resting on my face. ‘Not yet.’

I felt scrutinised.

‘What are you here for, Summer?’

She shrugged, evasive. ‘We were best friends. Not that long ago, you might recall.’

The word ‘best’ made my insides lurch.

‘Not any more,’ I said evenly.

‘Come on, you didn’t give me a chance. We were still all screwed up over Wolf. Fen was falling apart. Thalia had been falling apart for a while. We just needed time.’

‘Your mother came in here, into this kitchen, and categorically told me to stay away from you. Like I’m some horrible influence or something. Like I walked in and screwed up
your
life, instead of it happening the other way around.’

‘You did,’ she said.

I gaped at her. ‘Me?
I
did? You have no idea the effect you all have on people, do you?’

‘What do you want me to say? If I say yes, you can call me arrogant. You can accuse me of playing up to it. If I say no, you’ll call me blind and stupid. Maybe even a liar. Either way I don’t win!’

‘Well, this has been fun,’ I said, pushing my chair
back. ‘But I have a life I have to get back to, and I’m sure you do, too. So thanks for dropping by.’

‘What?’ She looked genuinely panicked, enough to stop me. ‘I’m not going yet. I can’t. We need to talk.’

‘There’s nothing to say.’

‘Yes, there is!’

‘So say it!’

Summer stared at me, wide-eyed. Then she collapsed back in her chair. Her boot slammed against the table leg, slopping hot chocolate over the mug rims.

‘God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You never made it easy, did you?’

I was mystified. ‘Made
what
easy?’

‘Telling you I missed you. Telling you that you were my best friend. I don’t have best friends.
They’re
my best friends. But then you came along, and I realised how much I needed that. You changed us. You changed everything.’

She paused, staring at the hot chocolate puddle seeping around the bottom of her mug.

‘I seriously have not had a chance to come back home again until now. It’s been miserable. I’ve been all alone, okay? And you didn’t try to see me. I’d fantasise in class about how maybe you’d find out the school’s address and you’d sneak into the grounds one night and find my window and throw stones at it like you did
before. I honestly thought you would. But you never did.’

She was inscrutable, rocking back on her chair. Then suddenly it slammed down again, changeable as the wind. The Summer I remembered. Her coyness fell off and she looked me directly in the eye.

‘So. Are we going to be best friends again?’ She flung her arms wide dramatically. ‘Despite the world trying to keep us apart?’

The grin threatened to crack my face in half unless I let it surface, so I did. I had all sorts of good reasons for not doing this. For moving on with my life and leaving them in the murky past, a past I would take out only occasionally, like an old photo album buried in a box somewhere in the back of the attic.

There were reasons. Just right now, I couldn’t remember what they were.

‘Would you tell your parents we were hanging out again?’ I said to her.

She tilted her head. ‘You’re going to have to give me more time on that one.’

I snorted.

‘Would you tell your mother?’ she said, soft and knowing.

I took a deep breath. ‘You’re going to have to give me more time on that one.’

She grinned. She seemed so relieved, like I’d
suddenly made everything right again. We stared at each other, both feeling exactly the same thing, connected, and glad for it. It was a very simple, powerful feeling, to be wanted.

Summer raised her hands. Her silver rings winked in the light. ‘We need to do it better this time, though. No more secrets. We tell each other everything, otherwise it won’t work. It’s what you said we should do, isn’t it? You got all high and mighty about it. Well, you were right.’

I was taken aback that she remembered. ‘Okay.’

‘Deal?’

‘Deal,’ I said.

Deal? Really? You’re going to tell her? Everything?

‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘Sorry about the mess.’ She indicated the spilled chocolate.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, sinking into disappointment and trying not to let it show.

She stood, shrugging on her jacket. ‘Do you want to know what you’re doing tomorrow?’

‘What?’

‘Having breakfast with me.’

‘I am? Maybe I’m busy. Maybe I’m working.’

‘You’re not.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I know things.’ She glanced at me slyly. ‘So? I
mean, if you can get past your mum.’

A golden warmth spread through me. ‘She’s on a late shift – if you come by at nine, she won’t even be back yet. I’ll leave her a note.’

‘Cool. I’ll be here just before nine, then.’

‘Really? I figured you’d tell me it was an inhuman hour or something. Since when do you even know what nine looks like on a Saturday?’

‘Oh, boarding school has totally screwed me up. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning over eggs.’ She gave me a serious look. ‘And I’ll tell you a secret. And you tell me one. And that’s how we’ll start it. We’ll just do it, like ripping off a plaster. Secrets and eggs.’

‘Secrets and eggs,’ I echoed.

She winked at me, punching her hand lightly into my shoulder as she brushed past.

I heard the front door slam closed.

Tomorrow. Secrets and eggs.

It took a few minutes for the nerves to start kicking in.

This wasn’t going to work. How could it? From now until forever, there would always be Wolf between us, his ghost curled around our necks like a cat, weighing us down.

What was I doing?

What was I
doing
?